Historically, large cuts of meat have been butchered and packaged in supermarkets, which has long been recognized to be inefficient and expensive. It is instead more beneficial to butcher and package the meat at a central processing facility that benefits from economies of scale, and then ship the packaged meat to individual supermarkets or other retail outlets. It is believed that central processing of meat would also lead to a higher quality and more sanitary product with a longer shelf-life compared to meat that is butchered and packaged in individual supermarkets.
Fresh red meat presents a particular challenge to the concept of centralized processing and packaging due to its oxygen-sensitivity as manifested primarily in the shelf-life and appearance (color) of a packaged meat product. For example, while a low-oxygen packaging environment generally increases the shelf-life of a packaged meat product, red meat will assume a purple color when packaged in the absence of oxygen or in an environment having a very low oxygen concentration, i.e., below about 1% oxygen. Unfortunately, such a purple color is undesirable to most consumers, and marketing efforts to teach consumers about the acceptability of the purple color have been largely ineffective. When meat is exposed to a sufficiently high concentration of oxygen, e.g., as found in ambient air, it assumes a bright red color that most consumers associate with freshness. After 1 to 3 days of such exposure, however, meat assumes a brown color that is undesirable to most consumers and indicates that the meat is beginning to spoil.
A variety of packages, known as “case-ready packages,” have been developed in an effort to overcome the foregoing challenges. One type of case-ready package is a peelable “vacuum-skin” package (“peelable VSP”). A traditional peelable VSP includes a lid formed from a laminate that separates into gas-permeable and gas-impermeable portions and encloses a packaged meat product that is disposed on a support member. Similar to a peelable VSP, a peelable modified-atmosphere package (“peelable MAP”) includes a lid formed from a laminate. The laminate separates into gas-permeable and gas-impermeable portions and encloses a meat product that is disposed within a support member having a peripheral flange to which the lid is secured. Prior to securing the lid to the support member, ambient air is evacuated from the interior of the support member and replaced by a gas that extends the shelf life of the packaged product. The gas-impermeable portion of the lid is peelably removed prior to retail display so that the packaged product is displayed in a state of re-bloom. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,739,113 to Kocher et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 6,670,023 to Mueller.
While peelable VSP and MAP case-ready packages have been and continue to be successful, there is always a need and desire for improvements. To this end, the presently disclosed package enables the initial distribution and storage of fresh red meat without meat-to-film contact, followed by display of the meat with meat-to-film contact. The resulting package has an appearance similar in likeness to conventional store over-wrapped packages, but without the need for additional packaging materials required by prior art packages. In addition, the delay of meat-to-film contact until the time of display significantly improves the appearance of the packaged meat products.